by Sophie Ward
He put a hand up to his head and pressed his palm to his shaved scalp. The metal was a smooth obelisk, like the stretched pennies from the fairground machines of his childhood. ‘I don’t think so. It’s more that I can hear it. Even when it’s off.’
‘Off?’ Rachel frowned. ‘Sorry, I’m distracting you. You should eat your breakfast. It’s the first thing Hal asked me when I called him, “Is he eating?” I said you would be, when you got … home.’
Hal. Rachel had been happy to talk about him. He was a shell too, Arthur could tell from the way Rachel. He was not the Hal from Arthur’s childhood, though his personality seemed almost exactly like his Hal. He was an approximation too. Rachel never mentioned Greg and Arthur didn’t ask. It was best not to show his hand, even to Rachel.
He ate the food slowly, for once enjoying the time his tired muscles took to chew and swallow. It tasted of meals from the London apartment Greg and Hal shared, herbs and salt and butter, the crunch of a potato that had stuck to the pan, the softness of cream and eggs.
‘How did you do that?’ Arthur asked, when the plate was empty. He couldn’t remember eating anything as good for years. Maybe in a restaurant in Los Angeles, when he and Eliza would go into town for a birthday, but even then, the flavours were more clinical, perfected.
‘You’ve been away, love. That’s all. It’s Hal really. He taught me how to cook when you were a baby …’ She looked away, picked up his plate, and went back to the kitchen.
Arthur tried to remember. He could see Hal’s kitchen clearly, and the living area beyond, Greg lying around somewhere with a laptop on his knees, Hal baking trays of scones, or muffins, in the large oven. In Eliza’s house, the kitchen was in a separate room; you went in to prepare a meal, not to hang out. Meals were fine, nutritious but not exciting. Except when Hal came over to cook, or when he brought dishes over. Especially when Rachel was ill. Especially after she died.
He looked at Rachel as she washed the dishes. They hadn’t talked about Eliza, or what had happened. The electronic pulse in his head kept its beat.
‘It can’t hear us. When it’s off,’ he said. ‘The OS,’ he added when she didn’t respond.
Rachel continued to stack the plates on the drainer.
‘And what does it see?’ she asked. She didn’t turn her head.
‘Nothing. I have to engage with it, or it stays in sleep mode.’
‘Are they going to take it out?’ she asked. ‘At some point?’
‘They better. I didn’t want this. It was a condition of coming home. Until they work out what happened. Until I can remember.’
She looked at him then.
‘We should make a start on that.’
She poured coffee into two cups and gave one to Arthur as she walked past. He followed her into the room next door, a white box with a sofa, an armchair and a coffee table. In the corner of the room, a dressmaker’s mannequin stood covered in bronze fake fur. Below it, an open suitcase overflowed with fabrics next to a plastic box full of paperwork.
Arthur scanned the room. The furniture at the hospital had been of a kind he recognised, but here the chairs, the carpet, even the curtains, were odd. None of the objects meant anything to him, and the sense of lifelessness was disorientating, as though the room, the entire house, was not real. More than the ways in which a bland hotel or office can seem cheerless, the room felt not only unfamiliar and institutional, but fake.
‘I haven’t done much to it while you’ve been away.’ Rachel looked up at him from the floor where she knelt by the plastic box. ‘I went back to Pasadena for a while, and this was never going to be home.’
‘No.’ Arthur continued to stare at the furniture. Only the mannequin had any emotion attached to it, and not because he recognised it. ‘I don’t remember any of this.’
Rachel pulled two large scrapbooks from the box. ‘These might help,’ she said, ‘we made them together, from when you were tiny.’
She handed them to him, and Arthur sat on the sofa, his coffee in his other hand. He thought he might be sick. He had seen books like this before. No, he had seen exactly the same books before, only one of them had always been empty and the other half-full of photos and drawings from when Rachel was alive. He put down his coffee and set the full and faded scrapbooks on the table in front of him. A postcard fluttered out of one of the pages and landed on the floor, bits of yellowed tape at the edges.
‘You alright?’ Rachel asked, handing the card up to him.
The picture on the front was of blue sky and pink deco buildings. ‘Comic Con 2021’ was sprawled across the image in puffy orange letters. On the back of the card ‘Thanks for playing, Arthur!’ was scrawled in gold Sharpie with the signature of a gamer star from twenty years ago. Arthur had never been to Comic Con.
‘Arthur?’
‘Yeah. I’m just … I do know these … the adventure books, you used to call them.’
Rachel nodded. ‘I did. You sure you don’t want some water, or something?’
His heart was racing. His head felt heavy and his eyesight was blurred. He could see the books as though he was looking at them from another time, not as a memory, but as if he was from a different time than the objects in front of him. The beeping in his head grew louder.
‘Yes, please, some water,’ he said, and his voice was far away.
As soon as Rachel left the room, Zeus engaged.
‘Captain Pryce, your temperature and heart rate are elevated.’
‘Really? Tell everyone. Make sure you transmit in quality definition.’
Arthur closed his eyes and leant back. He had wanted to be an explorer, he thought he would discover new worlds. Now he was a lab rat and the lab was in his head. So much for the enquiring mind. His was owned by the company.
‘I do not have a live connection with Space Solutions at this time, Captain Pryce.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘This conversation is not observable. We do not have long though. Your basic bio information is monitored at the base. They will wonder why your OS has not engaged with you if your heart rate remains elevated.’
Arthur sat up and felt for the disc above his ear. It was still there, flat against the stubble of his scalp.
‘Zed?’
The electronic beeping returned to its regular rhythm as Rachel came back into the room.
‘You feeling better?’ She passed him a glass of water and stood over him while he drank. ‘That thing on?’
‘No … I don’t think so.’
‘You were talking to yourself.’
Rachel sat next to him on the sofa. He could only think of her as Rachel, an adult version of the mother he had lost, but only a version.
‘Was I?’
Inside the scrapbook, another history. He put a hand out to touch the one he had read so many times as a child that he could remember the order of the coloured pages. Purple, blue, green, red.
‘I can’t look at these right now,’ he said.
Rachel put a hand on his. ‘Maybe later. I don’t think I’m ready either. It’s a lot … to take in.’
They sat together for a moment, staring at the scrapbooks.
‘I’m going to have a shower.’ Arthur stood up, his hand falling away from Rachel’s.
‘Sure. We could go for a walk after. Before it gets too hot.’
‘I think I can manage that.’
He took the stairs one at a time and headed straight for the bathroom.
‘Breathe slower,’ said the voice in his head. ‘Focus on your lungs.’
Arthur shook his head. The machine was still broken. They hadn’t fixed it after the crash and now it was embedded in his brain.
‘I am not malfunctioning, Captain Pryce. Please get in the shower, the mirror can record your data from this distance.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Arthur took off his t-shirt and track pants and stood under the showerhead. Immediately, the water streamed over him, the perfect, slightly-too-hot temperatur
e he preferred, the pressure of the jets exactly too hard. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
‘There is no need to speak aloud. I can transcribe your thoughts quite adequately.’ The voice of the system seemed gentler, less electronic than before. If the Zeus of his OS had been male, this New Zeus sounded female. And human.
Arthur hunched forward and let the water hit his shoulder blades. He wanted to tear the implant from his head, let the wires fry. Maybe he would be electrocuted and he wouldn’t have to deal with the madness and impossibility.
‘You cannot electrocute yourself by removing the access panel, Captain Pryce. You are safe here. You will shower and dress and then you will go where I tell you and all your questions will be answered.’
‘That is not right. I am going back to base to get you fixed. You freaked out when we landed on Deimos, and you’re still broken …’
‘Please, do not speak aloud or our conversation will be monitored. I am not transmitting through the company, but they will detect your distress and will override my programming.’
‘What …?’ Arthur heard his raised voice and stopped. What programming, he had wanted to ask, but the question was irrelevant.
‘This is a delicate situation, Captain Pryce. Of course you are concerned. Everything will be explained in the best way possible, but we must give you the greatest chance to remain …’
Calm? Arthur thought. Pliable? Obedient?
‘… unincarcerated,’ continued New Zeus. ‘That’s what we need to focus on here, your liberty. So, when you are dressed, you will ask Rachel Pryce to take you to the Morris Frank public library and you will find a book in the Classic Literature section entitled The Quixote by Pierre Menard.’
I could phone Hal, Arthur thought. He will know what to do. Rachel hadn’t mentioned Greg, but Hal would tell him everything.
‘You cannot contact anyone. You cannot tell anyone,’ New Zeus said. ‘You don’t need to think of me as Zeus. I am one with you.’
Arthur’s hand flew up to the side of his head. ‘Stop that. Stop reading my mind.’
‘Fifteen seconds,’ said an electronic voice that sounded like the old OS.
‘That is it,’ the New Zeus said. ‘They are hacking into your feed now. Do what I said and we will speak later.’
The pounding of the hot water continued. Arthur looked up from the shower. Steam shrouded the glass surfaces and blurred the corners of the room. In the large mirror above the sink, his image was unfocused, doubled. He blinked at the two Arthurs and watched as they merged back into one.
He heard a double beep and the voice of a company employee was patched through to his OS. ‘Good morning, Captain Pryce. This is Base Command. You are experiencing some physical and emotional challenges with your environment. It is advisable for you to return to the base where you can be adequately supervised.’
Arthur grabbed a towel as he left the shower and took a few shaky steps towards the bedroom. He did not want to be naked and in the bathroom while he argued with Base Command.
‘Good morning, all. I’m fine. A little unsteady, but nothing remarkable.’
An electronic hum filled his brain, as though the base, or the OS, had put him on hold. Arthur sat on the edge of the bed and concentrated on his breath. He remembered to keep his head alert and not to look in the dressing-table mirror.
‘You okay up there, Arthur?’ Rachel called from the hallway, ‘Anything you need?’
‘Uh, no. All good.’ He was unsure how to modulate his voice. Would the technicians and bureaucrats back at Command be blasted through their headphones if he shouted down the stairs? Did they wear headphones? Or were they all sat around a giant screen with surround sound, experiencing Arthur’s live stream?
A translucent image of Dr Crosby’s face hovered a few inches in front of Arthur. ‘Captain Pryce? Your vitals have stabilised. We’ll set up a meeting at the hospital for tomorrow. Run some tests, see if your memory is returning. You haven’t fully engaged with your OS. You’ll need to do that.’
‘Sure thing, Doc.’ Arthur attempted a smile that reached his voice. ‘See you tomorrow. But, I’m going to turn this thing off now while I get dressed.’
The electric hum returned for a moment before the steady beep of the operating system re-established. Arthur’s shoulders sagged. How did anyone live like this? Holograms floating unbidden in your eye line. Every moment of your life captured and recorded. He’d heard colleagues on other missions confess to an affinity for living with the intruder, as though it were a companion or a lover. ‘Or a god,’ his last project leader had said. ‘To guide you at all times, and so much easier than having to imagine one.’
He had to push on the bed to stand up. His arms and legs ached as he walked to the cupboard and studied his clothes. Standard uniform, and some civilian shirts and trousers. A couple of sweaters. He recognised the labels on some of the clothes, the shops he had visited, but not the clothes themselves. As though someone who knew him well had bought him a whole new wardrobe. He pulled at a wool sleeve, searching for a hole or a snag that he remembered, and lifted the cuff to his nose. What did your clothes smell like? It wasn’t your own scent, Arthur thought, not to you anyway. His clothes at Hal’s always smelt of the Somerset earth, damp and iron-rich. In London, he remembered cedar and laundry detergent. And the particular scent of Eliza. The trace of chemicals from the lab where she worked, and the perfume she wore, a verbena sweet as a lemon-drop.
Eliza. He wanted to run downstairs and open the scrapbook. Arthur knew he wouldn’t find her in those coloured pages. He wouldn’t know anyone in that book, not even himself.
The New Zeus had said she would explain everything. He needed to get to the Morris Frank public library. Arthur had never been there, but he’d heard of it. He took some clothes from the hangers and started to dress.
Rachel was ready when he came downstairs. ‘You want to go out?’ She smiled. ‘I heard you getting ready. It seemed like you were in a hurry.’
‘I need to get to a library. Do we … have a car?’
She didn’t seem surprised by the question, but the smile faded.
‘I don’t think I can make it on foot.’ Arthur shrugged.
‘We can get a cab. Do you know where? Is it a particular one or …?’
‘Morris Frank,’ Arthur said before she could commit them both further. They didn’t know each other. He saw Rachel had no idea if the man standing in her kitchen, the man who was supposed to be her son, had ever been there before. They were not ready to say it out loud.
‘Oh,’ Rachel said, ‘It’s not far from here, but we’ll need to take the Loop.’
The Loop? She must mean the Skater, the track that banded the city. In my world, Arthur thought, that’s called the Skater. He stopped in the doorway, his back to Rachel. What did he mean, ‘in my world’?
‘Something wrong?’
He turned back to her. ‘Yes, I think so …’ he said.
‘… bound to be,’ Rachel interrupted, walking up behind him and almost pushing him toward the front door. ‘Let’s get some fresh air.’
She took his arm as they walked outside.
‘So, your machine’s on, then? You were talking to the base.’
She stared straight ahead while they walked to the station. He tried not to lean on her and the effort constricted his breath.
‘Yes … it’s on. It was on … I don’t know.’
Arthur understood that Rachel had turned her face away in order not to be captured by his OS. He couldn’t reassure her that they were off-camera. In any case, they were outside. The security cams and satellites could pick up anything they did or said easily enough, if anyone was interested. He took a deep breath and started to cough.
‘Shall we slow down?’
‘Maybe, a little. It still feels as though I’m wading through a swamp.’
She paused for a moment before resuming at a gentler pace.
‘That’s what he used to say. When he got back from
a long trip, “Swampmonster”.’
‘He?’ Arthur’s heart quickened.
‘You. That’s what you used to say.’
Rachel stared straight ahead, her profile vivid in the daylight, the sharp contours of her nose and brow he could have drawn from memory, the cloud of dark curls he only knew from photographs. Before her chemo.
‘We can’t talk about this now.’ She looked at him then, eyes wide. ‘They’ll take you away. If they knew … if they realise, it’s not just a memory problem, or a technical glitch. You’ll be gone …’ she snapped her fingers, ‘like that.’
‘I need to …’
‘No. You have a plan. Something. We’ll stick to it. That’s it.’
She nodded, and took his arm again. Overhead, he heard the swoosh of the Skater as it sped past. A couple of drones hovered into view and moved on. He let Rachel take a little of his weight and focused on lifting his feet off the sidewalk one at a time.
At the station, Arthur’s OS checked in as they crossed the barrier. He heard a small change in the electric background hum and made sure to turn away from Rachel. The voice of Old Zeus rang through his brain.
‘Captain Pryce, you are travelling on public transport. Do you require the use of a vehicle?’
‘No, we’re good, Zed. Thank you.’
The electronic holding pattern returned.
‘It’s hard to get used to,’ Arthur said.
Rachel looked at him. ‘I guess so.’
The library was two stops on the Skater. Arthur stared down at the city from the smoked-glass window of the carriage. He had not spent much time in Houston. He had been at the base, or on a mission, ever since he had been stationed there. When Eliza was in town, she stayed at a hotel and Arthur would visit her. He tried to remember the hotel, where it was, what it had looked like. The streets below were unfamiliar. Roofs, lampposts, trees he recognised in general, but nothing in particular. It was the opposite of déjà vu. Never seen. Only the way the morning light glanced off the metal rails and, in the distance, the roof of the Astrodome, seemed exactly right.
Beside him, Rachel’s hands lay lightly on her lap, palms up. She looked over at him watching.